


Mirror Image

by Virodeil



Series: Caught Is Caught Is Cuddled [27]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Thor (2011), Alternate Universe - Twins, Gen, Mama laufey, POV First Person, POV Loki (Marvel), Unexpected Family Relations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:07:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28477383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Virodeil/pseuds/Virodeil
Summary: Loki tags along when Thor and his band of warriors confront Laufey after the failed coronation. There he meets… Loki?Well, Loki and Loki, how fun.
Relationships: Laufey (Marvel) & Loki (Marvel), Loki (Marvel) & Original Character(s)
Series: Caught Is Caught Is Cuddled [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1089204
Comments: 11
Kudos: 109





	Mirror Image

**Author's Note:**

> In Rey-verse, the person we know as Loki is actually named Loptr at birth. And again in Rey-verse, the jötnar is of one gender: neutral. Furthermore, compared to us humans or even the æsir, they have a lengthy period of childhood, so the one we know as Loki is actually still pretty much a child in their eyes by the time the first Thor film happens – about 8 to 9 years old, to be more exact. And, aliens that they are, the jötnar has different needs, wishes and views, including how to treat people – especially children – in public.
> 
> Started on: 5th November 2018 at 09:35 AM  
> Finished on: 1st January 2021 at 10:50 AM

There is something… different, as we set foot on Jötunheim – the first æsir to do so in more than a millennium, if nobody else dared to defy the _law_ of the Allfather like Thor has just done.

Well, Thor, and Sif, and Fandral, and Hogun, and Volstagg, and _me_ , but Thor is the leader, is he not? Not that Father would spare me his wrath, should he know that I did not manage to save Thor from this blunder. I was to be the future king’s main advisor, after all.

Well, but back to my haywire senses: The landscape is still that of an icy wasteland, as all the wartime accounts agree, but the feel of it….

I quicken my pace and slip into a spot at Thor’s side, unsettled but somehow _also_ elated. Not a mean feat, that, as his friends like to gather close to him. The temperature of this place necessitates such action even so, I would imagine, even if I do not feel it – and, to an extent, neither does Thor, or so it seems.

We march onward steadily along the broken paths through the desolate land. The warriors four grow more and more disheartened the longer we plod on, I can see and sense it, but Thor instead burns brighter. Incensed with the lack of challenge, I would wager.

As for myself… well, it is _all_ that I can do _not_ to scamper about like a giddy child so recently freed from unpleasant and unpleasantly lengthy chores, or even fly away with the wind to see somewhere new from on high. The feel of this place – the sturdy land, the cool and snow-laden air, the _somehow familiar_ seiðr….

By the time we see movement that is not ours or the wind, which turns out to be a lone jötun of a height with Thor, it feels like I am ready to vibrate right out of my own body.

“Who are you? What trickery is this?” Thor is quick to demand, while the warriors four spread out in preparation for a battle.

I frown and struggle to focus my senses, past the happy, contented thrumming of my soul, which ironically makes me even more unsettled than before. I want to see what makes Thor so tense and unnerved, like he was not – _oh_.

The jötun, at a glance, looks… like a jötun, if a comparably small and thin one: red eyes, blue skin, silvery markings and all. They have hair on their head, as black as mine, if not on their face and elsewhere, and there is not a stitch of clothing on their person, although I can clearly see that there is indeed nothing to hide under garments, but I would wager that both are _not_ what makes Thor so uneasy.

Because the jötun’s facial features, the way their hair falls, the way they cock their head and throw Thor an exasperated look, their voice as they chastise Thor for his rudeness….

I could have been looking at a jötun version of _my own self_ – a little taller, a little less thin, sexless, but still _my own self_.

And then, their eyes unerringly hone in on me.

“Oh,” is all they say, suddenly dumbfounded, as they scrutinise me from head to toe and back up again, and again, and again, and again, like a Midgardian bobblehead ornament.

I chastise them back, mirroring their words to Thor.

And, rather unexpectedly, they _laugh_ – freely, delightedly, sincerely, like I think I once did, so long ago.

Thor bristles and sidles up to me, throwing a possessive arm round my shoulders.

I shrug him off and address the jötun instead, with a grin that I cannot prevent from emerging, “Who might you be? I am called Loki.”

“Oh,” is what they say, again, even as they reciprocate my grin – and is it not _unnerving_ , to see one’s grin mirrored so perfectly on a stranger’s face!

And then it is my turn to gape, when they _also_ introduce themself as Loki.

“Did Heimdall drop us in another universe entirely?” I mutter dazedly, even as the jötun murmurs something in a language that is somehow untranslatable by Allspeak, equally befuddled.

And then, as if from afar, I hear Fandral remark, “Well, if he dropped us in another universe entirely, I would request to go home and try again, with a better result. This is most unnerving even for a doughty warrior such as I am!”

A hysterical chuckle bubbles up my throat, in response, threatening to become a sob as it burbles out of my mouth.

The jötun scowls at Fandral.

Then they bound forward, reach for my hand, and yank me through a surprise teleportation to… well, _elsewhere_. Far away from where we were but a moment ago, judging from how different our surroundings look and feel: a foresty feeling in the air, scaled, glistening grey tree trunks as wide as I am tall here and there, lush bushes with aromatic purple needles for leaves crowding the base of the trees, a path of stones and boulders through the bushes that begs to be traversed hoppingly….

“This is **Naryé** Anga’s homeland,” the jötun introduces before I can say anything. “Come, let us go deeper. I wish to see if there is some wild berries left.”

“Are you in the habbit of kidnapping strangers? Just so that you can tow them along to _pick berries_?” I grumble, but scramble up the beginning of the “path” after them anyway.

“Are you in the habbit of visiting your kin while armed?” they retort, and I freeze just as I balance myself on the first boulder.

“My _kin_?” I repeat, flabbergasted.

“Well, of course!” they huff, turning round, a few boulders ahead of me. “Thor is Cousin Voðen’s kin-child, so I suppose you must be Cousin Voðen’s womb-child, only with Amma’s eye colour. You feel like close kin, in any case. Do you not feel so about me?” They look genuinely _hurt_ on that thought, and I never thought I would ever see such an expression on the visage of a _jötun_.

But, “Cousin Voðen?” I echo yet another part of their earlier statement, as my mind skitters away from… other things.

They _whinge_ to that – an honest, childish yowl that makes me doubt their maturity despite their height.

“What did Cousin Voðen tell you while you live in that barbaric place?” they complain.

I bristle. “What does a child know of any place that might be barbaric?” I shoot back.

They cross their arms in front of their chest. And so do I.

They glare at me. I glare back at them.

But they _never_ deny the assertion that they are a child.

But if they are a child, then how _tall_ is an adult jötun?

Oh, Norns. This is just getting more and more unnerving!

“Well, thank you for inviting me here,” I mumble, at length, before teleporting away, unable to bear the increasing unease any longer, too unnerved by this mirror image of mine, this _child_ who somehow behaves too much like I do, this _jötun_ who claims kinship with _me_ so easily and readily.

Thor’s boisterous welcome is… well, quite welcome, amidst all the surreal things that I have been experiencing thus far. He berates me right after for “abandoning the quest on a whim,” although it was not _I_ who teleported me elsewhere on a whim, but… well, it is _Thor_ after all.

But we arrive at a broken-down courtyard before a ruined building where Laufey is already waiting, seated in a simple chair made of ice, amidst grumblings of my companions, _all_ directed at _me_ , and I am thoroughly _tired_ of it all by this point.

The jötun child – the other Loki – waving at me shamelessly from their perch _in Laufey’s lap_ is the last straw.

“You!” I point an accusing finger at the brat, spluttering, before Thor can say anything to an _interestedly watching_ Laufey.

“You!” they mimic me, but with evident relish, childlike laughter sparkling in their eyes.

But they are not _just_ laughing at me, it seems, for then they hop down from their living throne and skip their way towards me, and the same hand that pointed at me now somehow bears a handful of large, aromatic, needle-like purple berries, which remind me of the purple-needled bushes in the forest they brought me to so recently.

“Berries?” they offer, in a cheerful, sweet, guileless tone that knocks me off kilter _even more_.

No child ever treated me thus, in my own long-ago childhood. I was not allowed to interact with the children of the peasants, then, but the children of the nobles always had their own agendas – or _their parents’_ agendas – behind their kindness and offers of friendship towards me.

That is, if they wished to befriend me at all, as I was never interested in playing at being a warrior, which has always been the most favourite passtime of Asgardian boys.

And now, a _jötun_ child has offered me their friendship, _twice_ , in their own odd, unsettling, baffling way.

I pluck a berry off of their hand and pop it into my mouth, regardless of Thor’s squawking, regardless of Laufey’s eyes now trained solely on me. ` _Yes, I accept your offer of friendship._ `

But I can no longer ignore the latter when they – a _giant_ , indeed, at least thrice my height, but somehow… well-endowed, in the chest area, which is _unclothed_ , unlike accounts of Laufey- _King_ say – ask that “Loí” introduce their new friend.

“I am Loki Odinson of Asgard, Your Majesty,” I introduce myself with a polite bow from a prince to a… well, _monarch_ , if not a king, after hastily swallowing the berry, which tastes a little sweet and a little sour but mostly savoury, regretably perfect on my tongue.

Laufey hums indifferently to that. But then, as the other Loki tows me closer to… them, they declare softly, “No, it is not your true name. Do you even know your true name, child?”

I flinch, taken aback. Thor squawks, claiming loudly that I am indeed Loki Odinson, second prince of Asgard, but I can care less about it – about the oaf, too – right now.

There _is_ a name, _another_ name, which often filled my childhood nightmares and even several times as I grew older, and now I remember it once more, triggered by Laufey’s voice, and also the _somehow very familiar_ tendral of seiðr – _their_ seiðr, I can tell it – which is even now reaching out tentatively towards me. It resonated in my _soul_ , each time I dreamt about it, and gave me comfort – gave me _sense of self_ – even as myriad shades of pain and violence and cacophony surrounded it.

And even though the concept embedded in that name is ludicrous _to the extreme_.

Loptr _Laufey-childe_ – but I am not _Laufey’s_!

Still, I cannot deny the _truth_ of it when my mouth, quite without my permission, forms at least the start of the name, which I indeed often use in my wanderings: “Loptr.”

The courtyard falls into a deathly silence in the wake of my own soft proclamation, and also as a foreign ward _that I never knew was ever on me_ sluffs away into nothingness, triggered by that confession.

And then, just as the other Loki – or the _only_ Loki? – exclaims, “Ooooh!” in a flabbergasted manner, Laufey jumps to their feet and reaches down to pluck me off the ground, just so.

No, no, not just me, but also the jötun child, who now _snuggles up to me_ in _Laufey’s arms_ and exclaims in the same disbelieving – but joyful, oh so _joyful_ – manner, “Why did you never tell me! Who put that aweful ward round you? Even _I_ could not recognise you – and I am your _twin_! We have been searching for you _forever_ , Loé!”

I cannot answer them. I cannot even respond in any other way. Because now the seiðr wrapped round me – _Laufey’s_ seiðr – is no longer a tendral but a _torrent_ of power, even more familiar in that regard.

I cannot muster any surprise, thus, when they then proclaim, verbally and mind-to-mind, “Loptr Laufey-childe, welcome back, welcome home. Amma missed Loé so.”


End file.
